Bomb Cyclone

While the true bomb cyclone is the storm currently hitting the northeast US, the name also suggests the immense amount of work that the meiolab completed over the past few weeks. Highlights include 5 presentations (oral and poster) at the 18th International Meiofauna Conference, a sediment sampling cruise out of California to assess environmental impacts of a waste management company, Antarctic research sample processing and counting, my own work on microplastic ingestion, and a really cool meeting with Swedish scientists to get feedback on the final chapter of my dissertation (planned for this upcoming summer).

With how busy we've all been, everyone has decided to take well-earned pauses and relax until the New Year--and yes, I am taking a [shocking] break. However, I wanted to end this year's final blog post with a great picture I was able to snap from working at the lab this week. Here you can clearly see a mass of microbeads inside of the nematode individual, and what I like so much about the image is the stark contrast between the beads and the nematode. Unfortunately, a lot of this work has been tedious because often the nematode cellular structures that resemble microbeads have been quite prominent, but not in this individual. After the break I will come back to about two more weeks of this work and then move on to the next step of this project, which is likely shorter than the previous stages.

Have a wonderful holiday season, wherever you are in the world, and tune in for the first blog post of the new year, coming 01/05.

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